A positioning device is known for checking whether or not an object produced based on CAD data is correctly produced in accordance with the CAD data. In Patent Document 1, the positioning is adjusted by associating a positioning surface in CAD data which is a basis for the positioning with an object point group corresponding to a positioning surface in non-contact measured data.
Meanwhile, if it is difficult to adjust the position of work pieces, which are piled up on a pallet so as to be automatically supplied to a processing machine, the positions and the attitudes of the work pieces should be detected. Then, Patent Document 2 discloses a matching method including steps of pre-preparing a model of a target work piece, matching the target work piece with the model, and checking the degree of coincidence.